The weekend called for rain, so given my past experience with rain, I wasn’t sure if I’d have an opportunity to hook up the antenna(s) or not. Saturday was mostly rain and when it wasn’t raining, I was busy with other activities that kept me out of the shack.

While overcast, the weather on Sunday was much better with a very low chance of rain and otherwise cool breeze blowing outside. I had some free time while the baby slept, so I thought I’d tune up the radio to see if there was any activity on the 6 meter band. I didn’t hear much so I left it to work on some other things.

Last week I participated in the 13 Colonies Special Event. The 13 Colonies Special Event is a contest (of sorts) where the object is to contact another (specific) station in each of the original 13 colonies (plus two bonus stations). The event lasts the entire first week of July.

This is the second year in a row that I’ve participated in this event. Last year I nearly had a “clean sweep” (the term used to describe you successfully contacting all stations in a given contest) save for one bonus station. This year, I was able to contact all 15 stations — although I had a great bit of difficulty reaching South Carolina. Such difficulty, in fact, that I’m uncertain they got my call 100% correct. (The noise on that band was louder than the station which made it extremely difficult to hear them even when I had DSP noise reduction enabled.)

My impressions about this particular event haven’t changed since last year, but since I didn’t blog about it then, I’ll talk about them here: Continue Reading…

ARRL Field Day is the single most popular on-the-air event held annually in the US and Canada. On the fourth weekend of June of each year, more th an 35,000 radio amateurs gather with their clubs, groups or simply with friends to operate from remote locations.

In other words, Hams all over the nation drag their radio junk outside and set up temporary stations in attempt to contact as many other stations as possible. You could say it’s the intersection between a contest and emergency preparedness.

I’m not certain when Field Day began (and I’m too lazy to look it up) but this is the second Field Day since I’ve been a licensed Ham. Last year I didn’t participate since I had a few-week old new born. This year I originally wanted to head out with my friend, WK4U, and operate from the field. Preferably while camping. Due to differences in our schedules, we only had Saturday to work with so we decided to drive around and visit various Field Day sites.

I had participated in the ARRL January VHF QSO Party my very first year as a licensed Ham and I must admit that I wasn’t that impressed. It was cold, my fingers were numb and my arms were tired from holding an Arrow antenna at arms length trying to chase a dozen VHF/UHF contacts across metro Atlanta. Yet, I still answered the call from a fellow Ham to participate in this year’s VHF contest. I actually thought this year would be different — and for the most part, it was.

I was equipped with new radios, new antennas and most importantly, I intended on letting a mast do the work: I wasn’t going to be holding any antennas this time. So I met up with WK4U Saturday afternoon and we rolled up to the top of Sweat Mountain, found a spot in the shade a little ways down from all the antennas and EMI and got to work.

Last weekend (April 12th-13th) I participated in the Georgia QSO Party and while I achieved a score I’m proud of, I have mixed emotions about the contest. But before I discuss all the reasons for that, here is a summary of my contacts for the weekend:

This past weekend the ARRL sponsored a DX Contest which I participated in as time allowed. I racked up 78 QSOs for 62 new DXCCs. I was hoping that would be enough to push me over the top for 100 DXCCs, but I fell short by 6 contacts. I’m sure I’ll fill in the blanks before the next big HF contest…

All contacts were made QRP via my KX3 on 5 watts or less. I backed down the power on several stations to qualify for more than a dozen 1,000 miles-per-watt awards. (I would have displayed the actual MPWs and country names in the table below but I couldn’t figure out how to get my logging program to export all those details.) Anyway, here are the QSOs I made this past weekend: